Event

November 2016

2016 Shirley Smith Address - by Professor Ngaire Naffine

~~~~23 NOVEMBER 2016 – VUW LAW SCHOOL, WELLINGTON

Professor Ngaire Naffine will present this year’s Shirley Smith Address on the topic “Manliness, Male Right and Criminal law: the Uses of Criminal Law in the Formation of the Character of the Male Legal Person”.

Professor Ngaire Naffine is Bonython Professor of Law, University of Adelaide, Australia. She is an eminent legal theorist, with a particular interest in the moral and legal philosophy of the person within the discipline of criminal law. Her address will inquire into male character and conduct, as understood and counselled by some of the most influential men of criminal law. It examines British and Australian legal men of influence, and their uses of criminal law – in particular the most serious offences against the person – to assert a manly right over women as wives, especially the right to use force for sexual purposes. And it considers the role played by this assertion of male right in the formation and augmentation of male legal character, in the constitution of men as legal persons. It tries to get inside the male legal mind and work out how these men maintained a sense of themselves as fair-minded men of liberal principle, committed to high-standards of civil behaviour and to the autonomy and security of all, while condoning the use of sexual force in the domestic sphere.

This address is an annual event presented by the Women in Law Committee of the New Zealand Law Society’s Wellington branch. It is held in honour of the pioneering Wellington lawyer Shirley Smith.